Good Morning June-Gloomers:

In honor of the “gloominess” so often associated with this month in Sunny California, I have the perfect Body Designs:

I know it might surprise you, but every so often, a client comes in for a session and is feeling sluggish. While it could be that the client didn’t get a good night sleep, or that he/she is overly stressed about something, or it’s either too early or too late to train, more often than not, the overall issue is diet.

Therefore, today I will focus on what foods zap the body of energy and why. Then, the next time you’re scheduled to train, you might remember this installment and refrain from making poor choices.

First and foremost, bad decisions regarding carbohydrates will most certainly sabotage your workout. High Glycemic Foods such as white rice, mashed potatoes, pasta and white bread release glucose into the bloodstream as soon as they’re consumed. Thus, there’s an immediate jolt of energy, but because the body burns through them so quickly, the feeling is short lived and so is the workout.

Fried foods, meat with a high fat content, and oily snack foods like chips make the body work harder to digest, leaving it tired and not ready to perform. Why? Because protein and carbohydrates only have four calories per gram (remember a calorie is a unit of energy) and fat has nine calories per gram. So in actuality, your body has to work more than twice as hard to digest a fat gram than either of the other two.

And of course “foods” that contain a lot of refined sugar like, cookies and cakes, doughnuts, ice cream, and candy are not ideal pre-workout meals. They raise blood sugar levels too quickly, causing a spike in insulin, thus triggering the release of tryptophan, which then converts to serotonin (too much of a good thing too quickly), which then tells your body to slow down. Now, you’re ready for the bed, not the bench!

So, in order to keep your body full of energy every day, whether you’re training or not, avoid foods that are listed at 70 or above on the Glycemic Index, choose lean white meats and fish instead of steak or foods drenched in oil and/or are overly processed. And for snacks or desserts, reach for fresh fruit instead of the “eye candy”.

Your body will thank you. You trainer will thank you. And, if you practice these tactics at work, your boss will thank you too! And, if you are the boss, just do it anyway!